A Maestro Returns, First There, Now Here

For the most prominent Czech conductor of his generation, the rejection hit uniquely close to home. Jiri Belohlavek had been chief conductor of the Czech Philharmonic for just a year when its musicians won the right to elect their leaders freely in 1991. They voted him out.

“I was shattered,” Mr. Belohlavek (pronounced bell-oh-LAH-vetch), now 68 and crowned with a cloud of white hair, said this week at the Czech Center New York, a cultural institute housed in the Bohemian National Hall on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

But now he is back, having returned two years ago to lead, once more, this venerable but long-troubled orchestra. With mood and finances both stabilizing, the ensemble and Mr. Belohlavek are in the midst of their first American tour together, which reaches Carnegie Hall on Sunday and concludes, on Monday, with a program at the National Cathedral in Washington commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution that brought an end to Communist rule in Czechoslovakia.

The tour is an opportunity for audiences here to experience a rarity these days: an orchestra that sounds like itself. The internationalization of classical music over the past few decades has resulted in more versatile ensembles but also more homogeneity.

The Czech Philharmonic is a notable exception. Founded in 1896, it has retained the bright, rustic quality of its winds, the coppery directness of its brasses, its dark string colors and its infectious intensity and danciness through a storied history — it gave the premiere of Mahler’s Seventh Symphony in 1908, led by Mahler — and a distinguished line of conductors, including Vaclav Talich, Rafael Kubelik, Karel Ancerl and Vaclav Neumann.

“The orchestra has a real tenderness and coziness,” the French pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet, who will join it at Carnegie for Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 2, said in a telephone interview. “If you think of a really old, traditional and — I say this as a compliment — what we used to call an Eastern European sound, it’s that kind of old-fashioned, rounded sound, not just in the strings but in the woodwinds too. It’s really kept its identity.”

The violinist Josef Spacek, 28, who trained in the United States before returning to the Czech Republic as the orchestra’s concertmaster in 2010, agreed, looking to his own section for the source of the ensemble’s characteristic style.

“The key is in the strings, which are really warm and down to earth,” he said by phone. “Because we Czechs came from a sort of peasant lifestyle, there is a great sense for folk tunes. Smetana, Dvorak — they really derive their music from simple tunes from the countryside.”

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Mr. Belohlavek, conducting the Prague Philharmonia in 2012.CreditRobert Caplin for The New York Times

Part of the reason the orchestra’s sound has endured is its intimate home, Dvorak Hall in the Rudolfinum in Prague, which rewards sonic richness. And part is simple numbers: According to Mr. Spacek, just two out of the 118 players are not Czech. “It’s not because we don’t allow foreign people to apply,” he insisted with a laugh. “But we have a huge overload of musicians coming from the Czech Republic,” a country of 10 million with more than a dozen conservatories. It was the desire for a non-Czech artist that led to Mr. Belohlavek’s 1991 departure. His replacement was the German Gerd Albrecht, the orchestra’s first foreign chief conductor, who some players hoped would be an entree to recordings, tours and general fame and fortune in the West.

While the ensemble expected him to stay until Mr. Albrecht could take over, an angry Mr. Belohlavek soon resigned. He went on to found the competing Prague Philharmonia, become chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra and lead several acclaimed productions at the Metropolitan Opera.

For years, successive Czech Philharmonic managers tried to lure Mr. Belohlavek back to its directorship, vowing that internal political and financial conditions had improved. He demurred. “There is that proverb, ‘You can never step into the same river twice,’ ” he said, “and I couldn’t return to the situation I left.”

But he was attracted by a new administration that promised to restructure the organization, raise musicians’ salaries and revamp hiring and firing procedures; in 2010, nearly two decades after leaving, Mr. Belohlavek was reappointed for a term that began in 2012.

Salaries for the players now average the equivalent of $26,000 a year, 60 percent higher than they were a few years ago, before Mr. Belohlavek and the current administration took control. But they are still low enough, compared with major orchestras in Western Europe and America, to make it difficult to attract top international players. (Hence the scarcity of non-Czechs.)

Inside the orchestra, though, morale has improved, even with a more demanding schedule and work rules. “When the new management came, they promised they would make a pay raise for everyone, and it did happen,” Mr. Spacek said. “And when you make this happen, you make the orchestra trust in you, and that’s why we’re in a good state of mind.”

The orchestra’s budget has more than doubled since 2000, and audience interest seems to have significantly increased, too. While subscription programs are now repeated three times, rather than twice, attendance has still risen in recent years, to an average of more than 90 percent capacity from around 65 percent.

It is a confident position from which to begin the current tour. In addition to the Liszt concerto, the program in New York includes Janacek’s raucous, resplendent tone poem “Taras Bulba” and, appropriately, Dvorak’s classic Symphony No. 9, “From the New World,” music’s grandest synthesis of Czech and American styles, which was composed here and had its premiere at Carnegie Hall in 1893.

In an exciting convergence of events, the performance comes just as Dvorak’s original manuscript for the symphony goes on view, for five days starting Monday, at the Czech Center, the first time it has been seen in this country since its composer took it back to Europe in 1895. It is a reminder of the authenticity that the Czech Philharmonic still provides in its core repertory, down to the meatiness of its bassoons.

“This is what we are trying to maintain and preserve,” Mr. Belohlavek said. “And I would say it’s still there. We are succeeding.”

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